


Inherited Soul (Once)

by thatsrightdollface



Series: KamiHaji Week 2018 [6]
Category: Kamisama Hajimemashita | Kamisama Kiss
Genre: Akura-ou Day - Freeform, Gen, Post-Canon, Reincarnation, meant to read kinda like a fairytale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 10:36:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15727677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Akura-ou, post canon: a character study.





	Inherited Soul (Once)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for KamiHaji Week on Tumblr!!! Sorry for anything I got wrong - I may've taken some creative license, sticking Mizuki in here - and thank you for reading, if you do~~~
> 
> Have a great day!

Once, there was a little girl who had tangled hair – with ribbons in it! – and she ran through the carnival tasting cotton candy and sticky spilled soda just everywhere, everywhere.  Her bones shuddered a little every time her feet hit the pavement, and she felt so alive all the time.  She had a human name she carried around with her, and she hated school but loved being louder than everybody else.

No.

Wait.

But that wasn’t all of it!

Once, there was a laughing dark king, who raged across the face of the earth and took whatever he wanted – even his brother the kitsune’s silky coats, sometimes.  He was called Akura-ou, and his smile was sharp as all the pain…  All the dread mortality…  He had never known how to feel.  His eyes were like coins laid over the eyes of the dead.  His life was going to stretch on forever and ever, full of bleeding rivers and gore under his claws.  It was going to last –

_Was going to –_

Once, there was a little girl who knew her brother the kitsune – (but not a kitsune, anymore, what with all his businessman suits and his conference calls and his tired smiles) – even now.  Sometimes she dreamt about going to classes she hadn’t realized she was taking, and sometimes she dreamt about waiting formless and stranded in a frozen wasteland, and sometimes she dreamt about swaggering around and leaving villages ground under her boot.  Akura-ou’s boot.  Her boot?

Those rememberings weren’t the little girl’s, not completely and they didn’t come often as she grew up.

It was more likely she dreamt about stealing candy from her classmates or burrowing under the school to find a world built upside-down.  More likely, more likely.

But that still left the mornings she woke up smothering a wild, tear-soaked laughter.  She’d feel transformed inside her skin, just a little bit, then, when mornings like that came.  It wasn’t exactly a bad thing.  Maybe she’d hurry to her mother, so being real would start feeling normal again.  Or maybe she’d close her eyes and know more than she was supposed to about so many things.

Once, there was a little girl who had been born with an inherited soul.  The sacred white snake murmured about it behind his hand, when she made a mess of his lord and master’s garden.  Not in an accusing way, really.  Just because it was something to be known.  He might call her inside and beg her to watch TV quietly, but most babysitters did that after enough things got smashed.

Once, there was a little girl who called her brother the kitsune when she frightened her classmates without meaning to.  Or sometimes when she _had_ meant to, but didn’t think it would stick.  It was important to remember she had a best friend, whatever other little girls told each other about her, or what birthday parties she did or did not get invited to.

But before that – in an impossible before –

Of course there was a laughing dark king who hadn’t understood how his brother could want to become mortal for any reason at all.

Mortals were weak, hilariously breakable things, after all.

Maybe he should’ve known that wasn’t going to be all of the story.


End file.
